The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

Nick was Griffin’s father and a well-known writer and producer. Griffin details the trajectory of Nick’s career—his rise and fall in Hollywood and his eventual resurgence and success as a writer—in the book. Alongside this, Griffin sheds light on Nick’s personal life and relationships, including with Griffin’s mother, and Nick’s brother and sister-in-law, John Dunne and Joan Didion.

Nick was a sensitive man with a tendency to seek adulation that did not always serve him or his loved ones well. His attraction to Hollywood lay as much in the glitz and glamour of the film as it did in the work itself; thus, Griffin’s recollections of the Dunnes’ early years in California revolve more around the parties that Nick and Lenny hosted than around Nick’s work itself. Nick truly came into his own career-wise after he left drugs, alcohol, and Hollywood for good and found his voice as a writer.

Nick’s desire for status and approval partly contributed to the demise of his marriage, with Lenny tiring of the constant hosting and socializing. The other factor was Nick’s sexuality, which he initially kept hidden from Lenny, and his affairs with men throughout their marriage. Though Nick’s choices sometimes hurt both himself and his family, Griffin presents him with empathy and understanding. For instance, in the opening chapters, Griffin details the abuse that Nick endured at his own father’s hands for being too “sensitive.” Though his father and peers derided him as unmasculine, implying that he lacked toughness, Nick demonstrated extraordinary valor in his military service, even receiving a medal of honor for risking his life to rescue two wounded comrades. This paints Nick as a figure warranting both sympathy and understanding for some of his actions. Similarly, despite his affairs, Nick’s love for Lenny was constant and apparent, even after their divorce; he was distraught when she left him, and he rushed to her side as soon as she needed him.

Griffin’s portrait of Nick is that of a talented man who loved fiercely and whose tragic flaw was his intense desire for social and professional approval. Although he faced heartbreak and failure with both of these early on in his life, he was clawing his way back again, and Dominique’s death was a turning point of sorts. In the aftermath of this tragedy, Nick finally turned his life around and received what he had always wanted: love reciprocated (even if platonically) and success and fame for himself.

Lenny was Griffin’s mother. Initially moving to New York with theater dreams of her own, Lenny quickly traded them in to become a wife and mother after she met and married Nick. Despite their initial whirlwind romance, marrying just a year after they first met, Lenny and Nick’s marriage eventually broke down a little more than a decade later. However, the tragedy of their daughter’s death eventually brought them back together years later.

Lenny was someone of quiet and consistent strength. When it became apparent to her that her relationship with Nick was not in a good place, she took the hard step of asking for a divorce and almost single-handedly parented her three young children after. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when her sons were still teenagers, but her degenerative condition did not translate into self-pity or despair. For instance, she informed her children of her diagnosis only long after she had discovered it, and she quickly moved to make practical adjustments to her life, like moving out of a multi-story house. Lenny’s composure and stability is captured in the Prologue, which describes her receiving news of Dominique’s condition from Detective Johnston and still managing to maintain a polite demeanor as she called Nick.

Lenny’s strength is also seen in how she was undeterred by either her physical condition or the painful tragedy she experienced when her daughter was murdered. Rather, it almost invigorated her, and she threw herself into activism. Unsatisfied with the lack of justice obtained for her daughter, Lenny went on to found Justice for Homicide Victims, an organization that had a real impact on legislation surrounding victims’ rights.